Swords and Needles
by audaces fortuna iuvat
Summary: In the Spring of 1193, Harry Potter is smitten with young Draco Malfoy, the new hero among the jousting knights of Normandy, until she finds herself another of his passionate conquests. girl!harry WIP MedaevalAU
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer**: Not mine. Nuh uh. No way. Well, everyone who you recognise isn't. I do own the other characters… the MEAN ones. Yeh. And, before you start yelling, I KNOW that you've read this before. It's a rewrite due to foolishness and forgetfulness with passwords. Ahahahaha.

**Author's Note**: In this fic, the HP cast do NOT have magic. Magic does exist in this world though. As you can see… what with Harry being cursed and everything. Yeh. Understand? Good, good. OH and English isn't my mother tongue, okay? You go write a perfectly flawless story in French or Italian, and then you can criticise, alright?

**Warnings: **This is kinda slash, but kinda not. There is NO male-male relationship though there is a Draco/girl!Harry. Kinda. Oh, it's complicated. Yes. Oh, and mentions of sexual harassment. But not graphic. Nah uh.

**Chapter One **

**The Breton Borders, spring 1193**

Lucius Malfoy was in his tent with an obliging whore and a pitcher of the strongest cider he could lay hands upon, when he received the news that his half-brother Draco had ridden into the camp.

It had been raining since dawn, a damp grey mizzle that concealed the tourney field in the mist and chilled the grumbling knights through their cloaks and quilted gambesons to the bone. It was springtide in the world at large, but these Breton borderlands seemed to be suspended in a time of their own. Lucius would not be surprised to see Arthur, Guinevere and the entire court of Camelot emerge on shadowy horses through the rain haze veiling the trees. Certainly less surprised than to be informed that the youth he had last seen as a child of eleven years old at their father's funeral, and whom he thought pursuing a career in the church, was awaiting him at the communal camp fire.

The soldier who had delivered the news, and almost had his head bitten off for his trouble, dropped the tent flap and returned to his dice game.

"Bones of Christ!" Lucius swore, and sat up on his straw pallet. His head swam, and he had to concentrate to focus. Raising the stone cider jug to his lips, he took several hard gulps.

The young women at his side rolled onto her stomach and regarded him through a tangle of greasy blonde hair. Lucius wiped his mouth on his wrist and gave her the jug.

"You have to go?" She looked at him over the rim.

Narcissa was one of the many draggle-tailed women who followed the knights and soldiers from tourney to tourney, war to war, washing, cooking, pleasuring and tending. Some became wives; others belonged to any man with the money to pay for their services. Narcissa was one of the latter, but ambitious to change her status, and Lucius frequently took advantage of her striving. No more striving today, however.

"Unfortunately, sweetheart, I do," he replied with a mingling of regret and irritation. Mindful of his buzzing head, he leaned over to draw on his hose and attach them to the leather straps on his braies.

"Let me do that." Returning the jug, Narcissa knelt before him to secure the trousers to his undergarment. Her fingers brushed against his naked thighs and her full breasts undulated within her chemise.

Lucius closed his eyes and swallowed. "Stop that, you minx," he groaned. "I can't present myself to the lad with this tent pole in my breeches!"

Narcissa giggled. Her hand closed playfully over the bulge at his crotch before he pulled away.

Lucius took another swig of cider, belched, then grimaced at the sour taste that filled his mouth. "Draco." He tested the name on his tongue and tried to interest his wits, but they had been bludgeoned from existence by a combination of drink and thwarted lust. Scowling, Lucius struggled into a shirt of stained yellow linen and laced the frayed drawstring. His mind held the image of a skinny, knock-kneed brat with thin features and huge blue-grey eyes beneath a mop of snowy curls – a changeling, all the other Malfoys being broad and brash. But that memory was at least seven years old, and probably as stale as the garments he had just donned.

"A bold name," said Narcissa huskily.

"You think so?" Lucius fished around for his boots. "Actually he was christened Draconis to please his mother, but she was the only one who ever called him that."

Narcissa raised her brows. "Draconis?" Her tongue fumbled the ending. She had drunk as much cider as Lucius.

"It's Greek," Lucius said with a shake of his head. "After he was widowed, my father went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but only got as far as the Bosphorus. He came home with some hairs from St Peter's beard, and Draconis's mother. We never thought he would remarry – he already had five sons – but he was an unpredictable old bastard, and I suppose that Anna was far too exotic for him to resist. He always said that she was the greatest treasure in Constantinople." Lucius wriggled his toes down into the boots. In one place the leather sole was almost worn through, and in another the stitches gaped to show flesh. "Ah, Christ," he growled with a spurt of exasperation. "Never mind the treasures of Constantinople, what in the name of Christ's ten toes is the little fool doing here?"

"Perhaps he brings family news?" Narcissa suggested, covering her short chemise with her patched linen gown.

"Hah, the only news to interest me would be that I had come into an inheritance and since there is only Draconis behind me in the line, I doubt that."

"Then let him wait."

Lucius glanced at her with irritation. He preferred Narcissa when her mouth was not occupied with speech. "See if you can make some order of this chaos," he said with a terse gesture around the small tent where scarcely an inch of floor was visible beneath the various items and debris of his nomadic existence.

She smiled sweetly and held out her palm. "Other services cost more," she said sweetly.

Lucius scowled, fumbled down inside his shirt for the purse he wore against his skin and found her a small silver coin. "You're a leech, woman".

"But it's not just blood I suck, is it?" she retorted provocatively as he stamped out of the tent into the soft noonday drizzle.

From the field beyond the tents came the muted thud of hooves bogged down in the soggy turf and the familiar crack of lance on shield as two knights practised their craft in preparation for the opening of the tourney in two days' time. Other eager beavers were about their swordplay, rusting their equipment so that they would have to spend all evening scouring and burnishing. Lucius had long since outlived such enthusiasm.

The first thing he saw as he approached he communal campfire was the horse, its rib bones staring through the dull, mud encrusted hide. Lucius's mouth tightened. A beast in that condition was an indictment of any owner. The knight holding the bridle gave him an eloquent glance. Lucius met it with an arched brow and thrusting past him to the warmth of the flames was brought face to face with Draco.

The young man was as tall and slender as a willow sapling, and shivering so hard that he had little control over his muscles. A cloak of once good blue wool, now dirty and threadbare, hung on his shoulders and was covered by a filthy shawl of coarse homespun for added warmth. A cheap bone pin, bereft of all detail, secured the shawl to the mantle. Tunic and chausses were thin and frayed and the shoes were ten times worse then Lucius's own.

All this the older man assessed with one rapid glance. Nor did he miss the long knife at the lad's belt. The white hair was a dense tangle of eldritch curls, and beneath its heaviness, Lucius perceived the longboat bones of the Malfoys, sleek and bold, but malleable still with youth. The straight white brows, the grey eyes were the legacy of Draco's Byzantine mother, as were the slender, monkish hands. But there was nothing remotely monkish about the rest if Draco's appearance at the moment.

"Well," Lucius's flippant tone shielded a host of conflicting emotions, "this is a surprise. To what do I owe this pleasure, assuming that I am indeed addressing my brother?"

The youth's pupils contracted. His throat bobbed convulsively. "I can prove it," he answered hoarsely. Fumbling beneath the shawl and cloak, he tugged out a leather cord on which hung a small Greek cross of gold set with cabochon amethysts. "It was my mother's. She brought it from Constantinople, and she always wore it on her breast, you know she did."

Their fingers touched as the keepsake was passed across, and Lucius glimpsed angry red abrasions encircling the youth's wrists. The cross was warm from its bed against the boy's skin, its cord slightly damp. The gold gleamed in Lucius's palm, its richness speaking to him of wealth beyond his grasp. Beyond Draco's too. Their father's Byzantine wife had been dowered with little more then this jewel and her exotic beauty.

"You need prove nothing, I know you are kin," Lucius said brusquely, and returned the treasure. "Stow it back where it belongs and do not be too swift to show it about. Men are robed and murdered for less."

Draco struggled and fumbled, his hands shaking almost beyond his control. An unwanted pang off tenderness and rage cut through Lucius's irritation. "What are you doing here, lad?" he asked on a gentler note. "This is no place for an aspiring monk."

The eyes flashed wide and the mobile lips curled into a snarl. "I've never aspired to be a monk! I was pushed into the cloister against my will. I've left it and I'm never going back." He sucked a rapid breath between his teeth. "I've come to join you instead."

"You've what?" Lucius was aghast.

"I want to learn soldiering; I want to become a knight."

Someone laughed, hastily turning the sound into a cough. Lucius's face grew grim, and his lips were so stiff that it was difficult to speak. "You won't learn at my fire," he said brutally. "I'm a mercenary. I earn my bread by the strength of my arm and the skin of my teeth. I cannot afford to be hampered by an untutored weakling on the run from the cloister. Go to our brothers and seek your refuge there."

"They'll only send me back to the church to be beaten again… if they don't beat me first," Draco retorted, his eyes blazing with glints of sapphire. "I'd rather starve!"

"You might have to," Lucius growled, but his mind had settled on the disturbing words 'beaten again' and linked them to the marks on Draco's narrow wrists. He knew he could not turn the lad away in this condition. He'd be dead within the week.

The drizzle increased, the cobweb veils turning to harder individual drops, plump and cold. On the field the knights abandoned their practice. Banners dripped, impotent and limp, from the tops of tents, their brave colours water-stained and dark. Lucius cleared his throat.

"Best come and shelter inside the tent until the rain passes over," he said testily. "But you need not think I am going to keep you."

The young man inhaled to speak, but no words came. Instead, his eyes rolled upwards and his knees buckled. A lifetime of living on his wits catapulted Lucius forward to catch Draco's falling weight before it struck the cauldron tripod. He was shocked at the lightness of the youth, the feel of bones uncushioned by flesh.

"Hey, Lucius, you make a good nursemaid!" crowed a balding knight with a heavy paunch.

"Shut your mouth, Weasley," Lucius snarled.

The man holding Draco's emaciated mount raised the bridle in his right hand to gain Lucius's attention. "I'll tether him with your others, shall I?"

"Do with him what you want, James," Lucius said through his teeth. "Ride him in your next joust if you want!" A string of guffaws and good-natured insults ringing in his ears, Lucius threw Draco over his shoulder and repaired to this tent.

Narcissa had found a besom fro somewhere and was sweeping the debris into a corner with desultory strokes.

"Go to old Poppy and ask her for a flask of ginevra," Lucius commanded brusquely.

The whore rolled her eyes heavenwards, leaned the besom against the tent pole and went out.

Lucius laid Draco on the pallet and frowned down at him. What in God's name was he going to do with the lad? He had enough ado keeping his own body and soul together without the added burden of a green boy.

Narcissa returned with the ginevra and watched Lucius tug the blankets up to the youth's chin. "How is he going to swallow this?" she asked, doubtfully eyeing the wide rim of Lucius's horn into which she had just poured a generous measure of the colour-less juniper brew.

"Jesu, wench, it's not for him!" snapped Lucius. "Can't you see he's out of his senses?" He snatched the horn from her hands and gulped at it, then choked on its burning strength.

Narcissa advanced to the pallet where, less then a quarter-candle since, she and Lucius had sported. Now the youth's long body occupied that space. He was as still and pale as death, his eye sockets bruised, his bones jutting at his flesh. "Is he truly your brother?"

"Of course he is. Would I give up my bed to a strange whelp not of my blood?" Lucius rested the horn on his thigh and pushed his free hand again and again through his hair. "Last I heard he was a novice monk at Cranwell Priory, but it doesn't look likely he'll wear a tonsure now, does it?"

Narcissa bit her lip. "What are you going to do?"

"Christ, how should I know?"

She considered him through narrowed lids. "You owe me for the ginevra."

"And you owe me an afternoon's bed sport," he retorted. "Count it even."

She glared at him, but he ignored he, all his attention for the still form on the pallet. With a toss of her head, Narcissa flounced from the tent, leaving it half tidied.

The rain pattered down, enhancing the scents of new grass, of budding forest greenery, of fungus, damp and mould. Outside, cut off from him, Lucius could hear the rise and fall of conversation at the fire, a sudden shout of laughter, the dull thud of an axe splitting a log. He finished the ginevra in his horn, and with his belly full of fire, sought the flask.

Draco moaned softly, his eyelids flickered. Lucius thrust a muscular arm beneath his brother's shoulders and raised him up. "Drink," he commanded.

Draco choked and retched on the pungent strength of the liquor. Dusky colour flushed across his cheekbones, and his eyes brimmed.

"Steady, lad, steady," Lucius gentled. "I know it's got a kick like an earl's boot, but you'll fell better for it in a moment."

A grimace twisted Draco's lips. "They used to brew this at Cranwell," he croaked. "The infirmarian kept it locked up, but I stole an entire flask for a dare." His gaze met Lucius's. "Then I drank the lot and was dog sick for three days."

Lucius grunted. "These monks must think themselves well rid of you."

The grimaced returned. "Not half as much as I think myself well rid of them."

"You can't stay here, you know that."

Draco said nothing. An obdurate expression entered his eyes and his lips tightened; Lucius stared at the youth in perplexity. He had known Draco the child - an engaging imp towards whom it had cost nothing to be casually affectionate. Draco on the verge of manhood was a different prospect entirely. The little that Lucius had gleaned thus far suggested that he was dealing with someone who would push his body until it dropped. Strong-willed, stubborn, and reckless to the point of self-destruction; traits that could draw a man to the heights of achievement and then kick him over the edge of the abyss.

The tent flap opened on a draught of moist air. Lucius looked round, half expecting to see Narcissa returning for another assault on his purse, but instead found himself facing the far more daunting prospect of the wife and daughter of James Potter, the knight who had taken charge of Draco's horse.

"Lady Lily?" he said with slight trepidation.

"James told us that your brother has come seeking succour and that he is sick," said Lily Potter. "I have brought some hot pottage from our cauldron, and I thought you might want me to look at him." Her voice was firm and clear, accustomed to being the authority of her family. She stood no taller than Lucius's pungent armpit, and her build was delicate, but the lady Lily was another who possessed a will to eat down others beneath it, no matter her bodily strength.

At fourteen, her daughter, Harry, was half a head taller than her mother and with unmistakable feminine curves. As a child, Harry had angered a witch living on the edge of the Franco-German border. The witch had cursed the boy, making him useless as a knight, or, for that matter, useless as anything male. Once he had reached his teens, the boy, instead of growing facial hair and broadening, had grown hips and his waist had shrunk. A few months ago, when Harry had started his flux, he had panicked about seeing the blood between his legs, screaming at his mother to make it stop. Unfortunately for him, his mother knew little in the way of magick and he had been forced to get used to it. Now, Harry was a girl, or, as she was in many men's minds, a women. A shining plait of black hair, thick as a bell rope, hung down her back, and her eyes were a clear, warm green set beneath strongly marked brows. In her hands, protected by a swathe of quilted linen, was a wooden eating bowl filled with soup.

Lucius's stomach growled at the savoury aroma of the rising steam. "By all means," he aid with a wave of his hand, knowing that refusal was not an option.

Harry knelt gracefully beside the pallet with the soup while Lily fetched Lucius's spare shield and used it as a support to prop up the invalid. Lucius hovered, feeling like an outcast in his own tent.

"You might as well know that Narcissa has gone off with Arthur Weasley," Lily said over her shoulder. "But I suppose you expected nothing less."

Lucius shrugged and affected not to care. "I haven't got a bed now, anyway," he said.

Lily gave him a reproving cluck. Her daughter set about feeding pottage to the invalid, whose hands were too shaky to manage a spoon for himself.

As Draco consumed the hot food, his colour improved and the chills started to subside. "Thank you," he said weakly to the girl. "The last food I ate was three days ago and that was no more than mouldy bread and burned gruel."

"What makes you think you'll eat any differently here?" Lucius snorted, and was immediately castigated by the mother, her green eyes fierce.

"God save us, Lucius Malfoy, I hope that neither of us is ever thrown on your charity. He is your own brother. Don't you care?"

"Of course I care!" cried Lucius, and commenced tearing at his hair once more. "That's why I don't want him. He's run away from taking the tonsure. What earthly use is he going to be following the tourneys? How in god's name am I going to support him?"

Lily Potter rounded on Lucius with a tongue as sharp as a war sword. "If you had enough silver to waste on a gallon of cider and a slut like that Narcissa, then you have enough to keep the lad at least until he is well enough to send on to something better," she said forcefully.

"I didn't ask for him to come seeking me like a stray pup."

"No, but he is here, and he is your responsibility."

On then pallet, the invalid closed his eyes. The girl pressed her palm to his forehead. "Mama, he's fallen asleep," she said, leaning over him.

Her words filtered to Draco through a haze thicker than the mizzle outside. The scents of dried lavender and wood smoke drifted wraithlike through his awareness.

Another hand, rougher-skinned than the first, touched his brow and then the side of his neck. "A mite feverish," Lily said. "Keep him covered."

The shield was removed from behind his back and he was eased down on to the straw pallet. Blankets were piled over him and their greasy woollen smell filled his nostrils. Draco kept his lids shut and they talked over him, as if he were not there. He learned nothing from their discussion that he did not already know – he had lice and he stank. The sores on his wrists were caused by the abrasion of cords; he had run away from the ordered life of Cranwell Priory, and in its place he had chosen the dangers of the open road.

Heat prickled behind his lids and leaked through his lashes. He prayed for oblivion, but not as the monks had taught him to pray.

He dreamed that he was back at Cranwell, descending the dark dorter stairs to matins in the chapel. Cold stone beneath his feet, his breath a white mist in the midnight deep. Another cowled figure brushed against him. Fingers groped at his genitals and whispered an obscenity in his ear. In blind panic he stuck out, landing a solid blow in the concealed softness of the other's eye socket.

There was a cry, the scuffle of feet struggling for balance, and then the bump, bump of a body tumbling down the stairs. His assailant's descent into what would have been serious injury or death was intercepted by two other novices further down the dark stairway.

In the flickering glimmer from a wax taper, Draco found himself looking into the battered vindictive features of Brother Riddle, the sub-prior, and he knew that no one would believe that he had struck out in self-defence. He possessed a reputation that would preclude all mercy. Past crimes included stealing and drinking the infirmarian's store of medicinal ginevra, writing secular love poems in the scriptorium and singing them in the cloisters. Then there had been two attempts to escape, and gross insubordination to the rule when capture, resulting in severe scourging. The list damned him out of hand. They had shown him lenience before. The raised pink and white welts on his back were a testament to how lenient they could be.

The fetid, musty smell of damp stone invaded his nostrils. He felt as if he had been burned alive. Faces leered at him – skulls clothed in cowls. Skeletons clattered out of the walls and performed the dance of death before his eyes, urging him to caper with them. In blind terror he ran towards the door, but his escape was barred by Brother Riddle, a hoop of keys taunting on his forefinger.

Draco felt bony arms close around him from behind and draw him towards the oozing prison wall. He screamed and resisted, striving to free his wrists of the cords while they bit deeper and deeper.

"Ah, Christ," swore one of the skeletons irritably. "How am I supposed to sleep with you making so much noise?" It shook him by the shoulder, and its foul breath filled his face, making him gag.

"Drake, you purblind fool, it's only a dream, only a dream!" The shaking grew more agitated. One by one the skeletons rattled into the wall and vanished, dragging Brother Riddle in their wake. On a huge gulp of air, Draco surfaced from the nightmare like a swimmer too long underwater.

In the light from a tallow cresset lamp, Lucius's face loomed anxiously over his. Draco felt the fierce pain of fully fleshed fingers digging into his shoulder.

"God's eyes!" Lucius swore. "You were screaming fit to rouse the dead!" There was fear in his voice and his eye whites gleamed.

Draco laughed weakly at his brother's choice of words, but there was little humour in the sound. Sweat-drenched, he lay back against the lumpy bracken pillow. "You're hurting me," he protested.

The fingers relaxed their pressure. A moment later the rim of a goblet was rested on his lips. Remembering the ginevra he hesitated, but when he realised that the liquid was nothing more threatening then cool, watered wine, he took a long, grateful drink.

"Do you want me to leave the light?" Lucius asked awkwardly.

"It doesn't matter… won't make any difference."

"Then I'll leave it."

Draco turned his head and saw that his brother had assembled a makeshift pallet beside the one that should rightfully be his. "I didn't mean to wake you," he apologised.

"You could have fooled me." Lucius lay down again, thumped the rolled up tunic that was serving as his pillow, and hunched his cloak around his shoulders.

For a while Draco stared at the canvas roof of the tent, watching the flicker of lamp shadows. Beside him, Lucius snored. The sounds, the surroundings, despite their squalor, were oddly comforting. Draco's eyelids drooped, and before long, he was deep in an exhausted slumber.

**OKAMOKAMOKAMOKAMOKAMOKAMOKAMOKAMOKMAOKMAOOADSUFDUIVDGUIGVFKGYFUVGFBYGFYILAWL**

Taa-Daaaaaaaaaa. That's chapter one done. Phew. I thought it would never end. Anyway, yes, I have made Lucius and Draco brothers, mainly because I am too lazy/stupid/uncreative to come up with a new name for Draco's brother. Yes.

Go on. REVIEW. You know that you want to. Uh hmmmmm. DO IT! Ta.

**Rye  
**xxxxx


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer**: Not mine. JKR's characters. Leave me alone. I have nothing, I tell you, _nothing!_

**Warning:** go look the first chapter, you foolish people.

Thanks to Cèline for betaing this for me J. I love you, my dear.

Chapter Two 

It was well beyond noon of the following day when Draco woke up. At first he did not know where he was and it took him a while to gather his sleep-scattered wits. His head felt muzzy and his limbs were weak. He held one hand up in front of his face. The fingers trembled, but he could control them, and although his bones felt hollow, the chills were gone.

Tentatively he sat up and gazed around his brother's tent. It was compact enough to be borne by a sturdy packhorse when dismantled, and its size was made even smaller by Lucius's untidiness. Of Lucuis himself there was no sign. The crumbs of a finished meal were strewn on a crude trestle near the tent flap and Lucius's jousting helm sat among the debris together with a sheathed long dagger. On the floor beside the pallet was a stone jug of wine, a beaker of milk, and a shallow wooden bowl containing a chunk of bread and two slightly wizened apples.

His appetite surged fiercely, but there was an underlying sensation of nausea that warned Draco to be moderate. He drank the milk, ate half the bread and one apple, and leaving the rest for later, gingerly tested the ability of his legs to support him. He wobbled like a newborn lamb, but at least remained upright. His bladder twinged and he glanced around without success. Amongst all the flotsam of Lucius's life, there did not appear to be a piss-flask.

Draco went to the tent flap and pulled aside the mildew-stained canvas. It had ceased raining and a smoky-white sun was poking through the bank clouds somewhere west of noon. He had been in no condition to take notice of the camp last night, but he was sure it had increased in size. There seemed to be more tents now, larger and finer, some with coloured stripes. There were carts and wains, there was noise and bustle, and he did not think it was due to the drier weather enticing people from their shelters.

The hucksters were out in force, the pie-sellers, women with trinkets and lucky sprigs, a man with two trained apes on slender chains, Whores, beggars, a chirurgeon barber with his tooth puller's pincers on a cord around his neck. A monk walked into view and Draco took an involuntary back-step, a cold fist squeezing his entrails. The cleric's tonsure needed shaving and his habit was old and filthy. The walk was in fact more of a lurch. Disquieted, but not surprised, Draco realised that the man was drunk.

Once the monk had blundered from sight, Draco felt safe to move, but not out into the swarm of activity; his balance was not steady enough for that. Instead he made his way slowly around to the back of the tent, which faced open grassland.

Two bay pack ponies were tethered beside a nondescript gelding. Draco reasoned that they must belong to Lucius, for grazing with them was his own emaciated black horse. He waded further into the meadow, glanced around and relieved his bladder. Then he approached his mount. The stallion was too busy devouring the lush spring grass to pay him much attention. Draco ran his hand over the prominent ridges of the ribs beneath the harsh, dull hide, and grimaced to himself.

Behind him, hooves thudded on the soft ground and he turned to see Lucius draw rein and dismount in one fluid movement from a handsome golden-dun destrier. In contrast to yesterday's image of a degenerate sot, Lucius was groomed to perfection, his mail shirt glittering beneath a shin length split surcoat of blue linen, embossed in yellow thread with the Malfoy family device of three spearheads. He wore a richly tooled sword belt from which hung his scabbard, and the hand not controlling the destrier rested confidently on the braided leather sword hilt. Grey eyes narrowed, fair hair wind-blown and bright, this was Lucius the warrior knight, and Draco could only gape in astonishment and not a little disbelief at the transformation.

"Awake at last," Lucius said curtly. "You've missed most of the day." Removing his hand fro his sword, he tethered the stallion to a wooden stake knocked in the ground and commenced unsaddling him.

"You should have woken me."

"I tried." Lucius flashed him a wry glance: "I broke my fast; James Potter helped me to don my armour and we had a detailed conversation within three feet of your bed, and you did not so much as stir…Easy, lad, steady." He smoothed the dun's sulky golden hide for a moment before unbuckling the cinches on the double girth. "I even touched the beat in your throat before I left to make sure you were still alive."

Draco approached the horse. It threw up its head and its hooves danced a drumbeat on the soft meadow soil. Lucius grabbed the bridle and frowned a warning at his brother. "He's trained to fight. Unless he's familiar with your scent, he'll savage you." A grim smile curved Lucius's lips. "Needless to say, he's never been taken as a prize in any tourney. No one wants him. Once you are well, I'll give you the grooming detail so you can become accustomed to each other."

"Then you're letting me stay?"

"Do I have a choice?" Lucius said irritably. Relaxing his grip on the bridle, he returned to unsaddling the horse and cast a ferocious look from beneath his brows. "But you will work for your bread, or here won't be any."

Draco swallowed the sudden lump of emotion in his throat. "Thank you, Lucius," he said huskily. "I promise I won't be a burden to you."

"Did they not teach you at the priory never to make vows you could not keep?"

Draco's face twisted with revulsion. "They taught me nothing but fear and hatred."

Lucius deposited the saddle on the ground. His expression was thoughtful as he unhitched his sword belt and removed the gorgeous surcoat. "Have you strength enough to help me take this thing off?" He gestured at the mail shirt.

Giving the dun a wide berth, Draco came to his brother. Lucius crouched over, arms extended, and like a snake shedding its skin, began to wriggle out of the heavy garment. Draco laid hold of the sleeves, then the body, and helped him pull it over his head.

Consisting of thousand upon thousand of individually riveted iron links, the mail shirt was an item of great value, coveted by every fighting man. Only the rich and fortunate could afford one. Draco knew that this particular hauberk had once belonged to their father before being presented to Lucius as the means by which, as fifth son, he was to make his way in the world. Draco wondered what it would feel like to bear such weight, to fight in it.

Red faced, panting slightly, Lucius straightened and took the precious garment before Draco dropped it. As he rolled it into a cylindrical bundle, he glanced at the young man. "Who was Brother Riddle?"

Draco went cold. "No one, a monk." His belly churned. "Why do you ask?"

Lucius shrugged. "You were taking in your sleep."

"What did I say?"

"God knows, half of it was in Latin. You were reciting the Credo, but more as if you were defying someone than in duty to God. And you kept gibbering about skeletons coming out of the walls." Lucius's eyebrows rose and three creases pleated his forehead. "You yelled at this Brother Riddle that you wished you had killed him when you knocked him down the stairs."

Draco shuddered. "He's the sub-prior at Cranwell."

"And?" Lucius prompted.

"And he lusts after novice monks," Draco said woodenly.

There was a telling silence. Lucius fetched a ragged square of linen torn from an old shirt and began to rub the horse down. "Could you not have reported him to the prior?" he asked at length.

"He covered his tracks too well, picked his moments. He was high in authority, second only to Prior Dumbledore, and I was a known troublemaker. Whose word do you think would carry the most weight?"

Lucius worked with purposeful strokes and a grim mouth. "Did he touch you?" he demanded after another long pause, his voice quiet and hard.

"On the dorter stairs, going down to matins. But before that there had been the beatings. He derived pleasure…carnal pleasure from the use of the birch." Draco shuddered. He could still feel the sting of the strokes on his naked back, could still see Brother Riddle's lust-congested face as the scourge rose and fell, rose and fell. "I punched him in the eye and he fell down the stairs into two other novices. If they had not been there to stop his fall, he would have tumbled all the way to the foot and broken his neck." He spoke without expression; it was the only way he could maintain control of his raw emotions. "My wrists were tied; I was beaten and thrown into the cells. They held me there for three days without food or water. It is not difficult to see skeletons dancing out of the walls when you think you are going to die."

Lucius ceased work on the stallion, the rag clenched in his fist, his grey eyes filled with disgust and fury. "The sons of whores," he said through his teeth.

"Not all of them were like Brother Riddle. Many of them feared him, but they did not speak out against his rule because he was so senior a monk. To have defended me would have brought trouble down upon their own heads."

"I'd not have stood by and let a grown man abuse innocents with his perversions," Lucius growled, and turned his head aside to spit. "Did you escape or did they let you go?"

"The preceptor, Brother Snape, came to me on the third morning with bread and water. He freed my wrists so that I could eat and 'forgot' to lock the cell door behind hi. Brother Snape disliked me because I would not obey the rules, but he liked Brother Riddle even less. He thought that if I disappeared it would be better for all concerned, particularly the health of the priory. I begged and stole my way from Cranwell to London, then worked my passage across the narrow sea on a Rouen-bound wine galley."

"Christ, I'd like to have an hour alone with those monks and a honed gelding knife," Lucius muttered.

Draco plucked a stalk of grass and shredded off the seed head. "I couldn't go to our brothers at Wooton Malfoy. The monks would have concocted some tale more believable than mine, and I'd have been beaten senseless; you know what Reginald's like. Even if he agreed to keep me for the sake of the blood tie, he'd be constantly rubbing my nose in the fact that I'm the youngest son, born to a near-heathen and of small consequence, I could never live the live of a retainer at his hearth."

"So you came to me instead," Lucius said wryly.

"You didn't opt for Reginald's hearth either." Draco wandered over to the black horse again, and stroked its dull hide.

Lucius raised a pained brow, indicating agreement without making a comment that would draw him into deep water, and untied the dun. "I'll graze this one a distance away," he said. "Two stallions in proximity will only lead to conflict and your nag would likely be killed if they were to fight." He shook his head in censure. "I know you had a difficult time, Drake, but whatever my straits, I would never let a horse of mine descend to that condition."

Draco reddened at the rebuke. "He isn't mine. I've only had him for three days."

"Then where did you get him?"

"I found him."

"You found him?" Lucius's tone registered disbelief.

Draco twisted a handful of the coarse mane around his fist. The horse butted him affectionately in the back. "I was walking through a forest near Domfront when I came across a traveller sleeping beside his fire." He shivered at the memory. "But the fire was cold and the man was dead. He was old; I think that God must have taken him as he slept, for there was not a mark upon his body. His horse was tied tightly nearby and frantic with thirst, I watered him at a nearby stream, then I said a prayer of his master and took that which he no longer needed- his cloak and shawl for warmth, the cold gruel in his cooking pot, the knife from his belt, and the horse." Draco released the hank of hair and smoothed out the kink that his grip had made. "He's only young, I looked at his teeth. No more than four or five years old. He'll prove useful once he fills out."

"Remains to be seen," Lucius said without attaching any real meaning to the words, for his thoughts were upon all that Draco had endured to reach him.

"I know he will." Draco's voice quivered with the force of his determination. "And so will I. Lucius, I want you to teach me. I need…" The voice tore. "I need to armour myself."

A lump of pity and rage filled Lucius's throat and he had to swallow before he could speak. "We'll start as soon as there's more meat on your bones," he said huskily. "You're not up to swinging a sword yet."

Draco nodded agreement, but when he looked at Lucius, his grey eyes were ablaze. "But I will be soon."

Lucius returned the nod. "Yes, soon," he said gruffly. Certainly the lad possessed the grit it took to become a jouster, probably the aggression and recklessness too, but the price of such moulding came high. He crossed the space between them and slapped Draco across the shoulders to dispel the dangerous burden of emotion. "I've never had a squire before."

Draco smiled wanly. At least he had been accepted. Lucius might just as easily have substituted the word 'millstone' for 'squire'. He had never had an attendant before because he could not afford one. "I'll pay my way," Draco promised. "I can suing and play the harp. I can also read and write, if anyone should need the services of a scribe."

"Oh, there's always need for a song and a scribe," Lucius declared, his tone still over-jovial. He squeezed Draco's shoulder again, then returned to his horse and led it further into the field.

Draco followed at a safe distance. "Do you always wear your surcoat and mail when you do to practise?" he queried.

"I wasn't practising. I was seeking an employer." Lucius had uprooted the tethering stake. Now he knocked it into the ground at the new place and secured the stallion. "Most of us have patrons- greater lords for whom we fight. There are very few knights who take to the field alone. Individuals are more open to attack, always the first to be picked off. It is best to fight with someone to watch your back."

Draco tried to look knowledgeable. "Did you find a patron?"

"Indeed I did." Lucius's eyes gleamed. "Although I should say 'we', since I went a-wooing with James Potter. We've been accepted into the retinue of Geoffrey Duredent of Avranches for the duration of the tourney. Twenty percent of any prizes from captures go to him in person, and another twenty into the chests for the ransom of Richard Coeur de Lion from the hands of the German Emperor. The rest is ours. Geoffrey has promised to feed us at his board on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. We have fought for him before; he's an open-handed patron."

Draco absorbed this, together with Lucius's enthusiasm and felt a glimmer of anticipation spark through his veins. "Aren't there any individual contests?"

"On the Thursday." A warning note entered Lucius's voice. "Only the best knights run head to head, some would say the most foolish. It takes great skill, long hours of training for both man and horse, and you have to be able to afford to lose. You only have one attempt at success. If you fail you cannot regroup your loss unless you have another horse and the balls to go back and try again. Most don't." He smiled sourly at his brother. "Minstrels paint bold and glorious word pictures of tourneys, but they do not sing the truth." He wiped his hands down his chausses as if disposing of the subject. "Are you hungry?"

Draco nodded. His stomach had digested the milk, bread and apple in short order, and was now ready to be refilled.

"Good," Lucius said briskly. "There's a stream at the foot of this field. I'll lend you my spare clothes and you can go and scrub the filth of the road from your body. We're eating at James Potter's family fire, and that's a privilege worth using soap for. It was James's wife and daughter who came to care for you yesterday, Lily and Harry. James looked after your horse."

Draco had vague recollections of a small, competent women with lines of laughter at her mouth corners, and of a girl with a clear green stare, and a shining plait of black hair.

"James and I usually fight together as a team," Lucius aid as he led Draco back to the tent to find the replacement clothes. "He has no great stature on the field, but few men ever get past his guard. His wife is the daughter of Thomas Grindlewald of Stafford," he added with a little shake of his head, as if at some misfortune.

Draco's ears pricked with interest. "Stafford and his son are patrons of Cranwell Priory."

Lucius stared at him. "Thomas of Stafford a patron of monks?" he said in disbelief. "Pigs might fly!"

"Oh, it's all kindling and no fire," Draco replied as they entered the tent. "He's like Reginald. Pays lip service because it is essential for every man of standing to be thought of as generous and godly even when the opposite is true. He didn't take a crusader's vow, he paid silver to Cranwell instead – and half of the coins were clipped."

"I can believe that. I doubt Grindlewald has a single generous bone in his body."

Draco looked curiously at Lucius. "What is his daughter doing on the tourney circuits?"

Lucius rummaged among the debris scattered around the tent and found a linen bag fastened with a braid drawstring. "She fell in love with James Potter, who was a penniless knight recently employed by her father, and ran away with him rather than marry the man chosen for her. There was a huge scandal at the time, but you wouldn't remember, you were little more than a babe in arms when it happened."

"No, I don't"

"James took me under his wing when I first joined the tourney route as an aspiring champion with more dreams than good sense, We've watched each other's back ever since, shared the triumphs and failures – of which there have been many. There's a clean shirt and some linens in here." Lucius thrust the bag into Draco's hand, delved again, and came up with a crumpled but reasonable tunic of sage-green wool. "First town we come to, we'll find you some fabric for new clothes." He bundled the tunic on top of the bag, together with a leather jar of liquid soap. "Go on, get you down to the stream."

Draco made his way slowly down the field. His legs were aching anf there was a gentle throb of renewed weariness behind his temples, but at least he was free, There was fresh air on his skin and the grey clouds had thinned to show streaks of blue between. He had a place in the world of his own choosing, and the wherewithal to climb fortune's ladder.

The stream was lined with sedges and stood about ten yards wide at its broadest pint. A moorhen paddled frantically away from him in a race of silver droplets. Reeds long as jousting lances clacked and swayed together at the water's edge. Draco dropped the clean garments on a patch of lush grass on the bank and sat down. For a moment he rested, a glint of afternoon sunshine warming his spine. In the distance he could hear the shouts of men practising their art and the thud of a lance against a quintain target. He imagined himself astride a warhorse, a lance couched beneath his arm, a shield braced across the left side of his body. The smooth power beneath him, carrying him toward the moment of impact. The shock of steel upon wood, pressuring him back against the high saddle cantle. Cries of adulation for his prowess. As he set about disrobing, a faraway smile played at his mouth corners.

The water came up to his midriff and it was cold. Draco drew a shocked breath, his stomach clamping until it almost touched his spine. Shivers arrowed through him and his teeth chattered violently. Even had he been in the rudest of health with a surplus of meat on his bones, it was not the kind of day to linger over outdoor ablutions. He took the soap jar, tipped the contents over his head and body and set to with a will, scrubbing away several weeks of accumulated sweat and grime.

Beneath the pummelling his skin reddened. His eyes stung from the strength of the soap, and he squeezed them shut. He ducked his head in the stream to swill the soap away, then stood up, thrusting the water from his face and hair. Then, gasping with exertion and cold, he opened his eyes.

A young woman was approaching the stream, a stone water jar swinging from her hand. She appeared to be lost in her own thoughts, her eyes upon her feet, which performed intricate little skipping movements in time to the tune she was humming. Her head was bare; proclaiming her unbetrothed, still a child, although her figure bore womanly curves. A heavy plait of rich black hair secured with a green ribbon hung to her waist, and as she came closer, Draco recognised her as the girl who had fed him soup yesterday. This was Harry Potter, the daughter of Lucius's partner, at whose fire they were going to dine.

She crouched upstream of Draco and sank the stone jar in the water to fill it. Still singing, she raised her head, and her green eyes widened as she saw him standing there, naked with his modesty and hers protected only by the transparent distortions of the water. Droplets trickled down the fine dark line of his chest hair and disappeared into the stripe of fuzz below his navel. Her cheeks reddened and she quickly turned to the jar.

Draco wondered whether to speak or remain silent. It was not a situation for which he had any precedent. He decided that he would have to say something since he and Lucius were to be guests at her father's fire. "Demoiselle." He gave her the formal greeting, and thought how foolish it sounded,

She nodded shyly in return, and although her cheeks remained pink, she darted him another glance. "Are you feeling better today?" Her eyes travelled to the discoloured bracelets on his wrists then over the gaunt protrusion of his ribcage.

"A little." He cleared his throat. "It was kind of you and your mother to concern yourselves with me yesterday."

"On the tourney circuit, we look after our own." She stood up, the water jar overflowing. "Lucuis and my father have long been friends."

"Yes, he told me. Tonight we are to eat at your fire." In his own ears, his voice sounded stilted and awkward.

She hefted the jug and splashes of water darkened her gown. "I have to go, my mother needs this," she said.

Draco nodded. He was shuddering with cold and could think of nothing else to say. But their eyes held for a long moment, each examing with curiosity soething that was new and strange.

Abruptly the girl swung on her hel, water slopping over the neck of the jar, and made her way back to the meadow, her gait one-sided from the weight of the pot.

Draco waded to the bank. Shivering violently, he dried himself on the old strip of linen Lucius had given him for a towel, his belly churning with a mixture of anticipation, fear and hunger at the thought of the meal to come.

AUFNFIDSNOFUDBSOFIEHSFNIOVHSGBUEIUIGFBVJDNVIDOSHUDGSDVJ

Yes, so, there you go.

Hey, that rhymes!

Cough. Anyway, REVIEW. Please.

!!Gets on hands and knees and puts on puppy dog eyes!!

Hee hee.

Love you all

Rye

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx


	3. Chapitre Trois

**Disclaimer:** NOT mine. If it were, would I be wasting my time writing **FAN**fiction when I could be writing the actual thing?

scene change UHFVYGDFNHUGIS :) hahaha

* * *

**Chapter Three: Wimples and Worries**

Harry sat at the small portable trestle table, chopping onion and cabbage to add to the meat, barley and spices already simmering in the iron cauldron. Her mother was putting the finishing touches to a surcoat she had promised to have ready for one of the competing knights by dusk. The brass needle flashed in and out of the fabric with a speed and accuracy almost too fast to follow, but Lily was beginning to squint as the light faded and her eyes grew tired.

"Shall I light the lantern, Mama?"

"No, I've almost finished. Just this length here to do." Lily shook out the garment and turned it round. One half was blood red, the other a light orangey yellow.

"Who is it for?" Harry asked.

Her mother's lips tightened. "Peter Pettigrew," she said in a voice cold with distaste.

Harry swept the chopped vegetables into a wooden bowl and carefully tipped them into the cauldron. Peter Pettigrew was a man who not only fought to live, but lived to fight. He was her father's age, perhaps slightly younger, with a shock of prematurely grey hair, disfiguring battle scars and eyes like black ice. Men avoided him if possible, but no one was foolish enough to make him their enemy.

"We have to eat," Lily justified, as much as to herself as to her silent daughter. "In the good times we have to save our silver so that we can weather the bad." She bit off the thread on a broken tooth and held up the garment for inspection. "I would rather not sew for the man, but I cannot afford to refuse him."

Harry stirred the stew with a large carved spoon and glanced at her mother. Lily had been out of sorts for a couple of weeks now, tense and snappish, swift to find fault, slow to be pacified. Her father had been quietly avoiding his wife, a rueful look in his hazel eyes. For Harry it was not so easy. Unless sent on a specific errand, she had no excuse to make herself scarce. It was not safe for a girl of her age to venture too far from her own fire. Even fetching water from the stream had its hazards.

She thought of her encounter with Lucius's half-brother and the motion of her stirring increased. Draco Malfoy bore small resemblance to Lucius, who was huge and hearty. There was a brooding quality about the younger man, a hunger of the spirit as much as of the body.

"Careful!" Lily scolded. "Watch what you're doing!"

A cloud of hissing steam billowed from the fire beneath the cauldron and bubbles of stew bounced on the ion sides before vanishing in wafts of burned vapour.

"Sorry, Mama." Harry gave her mother a flushed, apologetic look.

"Daydreaming again," Lily chided with exasperation. "Harry, you must learn to keep your wits about you."

"Mama, I didn't mean to…" Harry broke off as a powerfully built man wearing a green quilted gambeson arrived at their hearth and commanded their attention. Peter Pettigrew was even taller then Lucius. Once he had been handsome, but the tourney circuit and the battlefield had taken their toll. His nose zigzagged down his face, following the line of successive breaks, and the flesh of his jaw was puckered from mouth corner to missing ear lobe where a sword had sliced him open to the bone.

"Is it ready?" he demanded.

"Of course," Lily said disdainfully, as if she had finished her sewing hours ago. Rising from her stool, she gave him the completed surcoat. Both her spine and expression were as stiff as wood. Peter's black eyes crinkled with amusement.

"I know that you like me not, Lady Lily," he observed, "but you do like my money, and that makes us equals."

"You flatter yourself," she said coldly.

"Then that makes us equals too, since you do the same." He delved in the money pouch at his belt. Harry watched her mother's mouth make small chewing motions and stepped up beside her, offering moral support.

Pettigrew assimilated the gesture and his amusement increased. "Tell your _daughter _that she will spoil her face and her fortune scowling like that," he said to Lily.

Lily drew herself up, her lips parted for a retort, but it went unuttered as her husband arrived at the fire. Pettigrew withdrew from any further confrontation by placing two small silver coins in Lily's palm, and turned away, the surcoat draped over his arm.

She closed her fist over the money, her expression one of barely controlled revulsion.

"Your wife sews a fine seam," the knight remarked pleasantly.

James Potter murmured polite agreement and held out his hands to the warmth of the cooking fire as if at ease, but Harry could sense his tension. Peter Pettigrew never made conversation just to be sociable.

"I hear that you and Lucius are fighting for Geoffrey Duredent tomorrow?"

Her father gave a guarded nod. "What of it?"

"It is good fortune. So am I. And I have a new flail to try out. I warrant I can dent a few helms with it, and beggar some high-born striplings into the bargain."

James made a noncommittal sound.

Harry wondered why Pettigrew was lingering. Surely he could sense he was unwelcome?

The knight caught her resentful gaze on him and stared her out with a smile. "Have you thought about betrothing your girl yet, Potter?" he asked provocatively. "She is almost a woman grown."

Harry went cold and folded her arms across her breasts in a protective gesture.

"There is time enough," James said repressively. "And I shall consider long and hard before I settle her on anyone."

"There speaks a wise father." Smiling, Pettigrew inclined his head and sauntered off in the direction of his own tent.

"The arrogance of that man," Lily hissed. "I wish I had never consented to sew for him. Did you see the way he looked at Harry?"

James sighed heavily. "Yes, I did, but I have to admit he was right. She is indeed almost a woman grown, and he will only be the first of many to look at her thus."

"I don't want a husband!" Harry burst out, her arms still folded across the unnatural breasts, and fear surging at her core. "I'm not even a real girl! Who would want me?"

"I have no intention of betrothing you anywhere for the nonce." Lines of care marred her father's face. "I have encountered no man I consider worthy, and until I do, your honour is mine to the last breath in my body."

Hearing the bleak note in his voice, Harry felt guilty. Her development into womanhood was the root of the problem. Nor was there a remedy unless she could find favour with a witch or became a nun.

Her mother said nothing, but there was a look of utter weariness on her face as she stopped into the tent to put her sewing box away.

Their guests arrived shortly after that, Lucius as heart and bold as ever and bearing a gift of six fresh duck eggs, their shells a delicate speckled blue. Lily accepted them with pleasure, a smile returning to her face, Lucius seated himself at their trestle with the ease of familiarity. Draco was more hesitant, torn between being polite and following his brother's casual example.

Harry murmured a greeting and busied herself setting out the eating bowls and a basket of small loaves in the centre of the trestle. She flickered a circumspect glance at Draco and met his eyes on her in a similar scrutiny. Both of them immediately looked away, but not before Harry had noticed that Lucius's rumpled spare clothes swamped the youth's gaunt frame. Her head was filled with questions, but none that she could ask without appearing rude or forward.

Indeed, the conversation during the meal that followed was carried almost entirely by Lucius and he father as they discussed their tactics for the morrow's tourney. Draco ate in silence, but was obviously listening hard, absorbing every word like a young plant putting out roots in search of nourishment. Harry eyed his slender fingers gripping the handle of his spoon, contrasted them with the ham-like ugliness of Lucius's and her father's and found it difficult to imagine Draco joining the two older men ion the battlefield. It was much easier to see him as a monk. And he spoke so little that she half wondered if he had taken a vow of silence.

A dish of raisins and slivers of dried apple completed the repast. Draco took only a small handful of the fruits and ate them slowly, declaring ruefully that he had lived so long without proper food that he had yet to adjust to eating a full meal again.

"You are young," James said comfortably. "You'll mend fast."

"Yes, sir." Draco slowly chewed another sliver of apple, the taste sharp on his palate and raised his eyes to Potter's shrewd hazel ones. "I want to earn my way in the world, not be a burden."

"Oh, you'll earn your way all right," Lucius declared, "every penny of it." He spoke brusquely, his words a shield against revealing tender emotions.

James considered the younger man thoughtfully. "Can you fight?"

"A little. I learned how to use a spear and shield before I was sent away to Cranwell, and before he died, my father had begun to teach me the rudiments of swordplay, and how to ride like a knight."

"Aye, you weren't a bad little horseman for a ten-year-old," Lucius acknowledged. "Of course, it depends how much you remembered, and if you have any talent for other skills."

James finished his dried fruit and continued to study Draco with slightly narrowed eyes. "Show me your hands," he said suddenly.

Obedient but mystified, Draco held them out to him, palms upwards. There was scarcely a tremor now. A line of tough, blistered skin marked the labour of gripping a hoe and rake in the priory's fields. His fingers too bore the rough texture of hard toil, but nothing could detract from their elegant symmetry. James took them in his, turned them over, pushed back the over sleeves and examined the long, scarred wrist bones.

"Takes after his mother," Lucius said. "There'll never be any meat on him."

"He's got time, and he is not as dainty as he looks," James answered judiciously. "See the strength of the bones here?" He raised Draco's right wrist and presented it to Lucius like a horse-coper selling the points of a thoroughbred colt. "See the span here? Add some weight and experience, and here sits a competent soldier." He released the wrist. "How old are you lad?"

"He'll be eighteen at the feast of St John," Lucius said.

"So he will likely not grow taller." James nodded.

"He stands need to. His head's already in the clouds!"

A faint smile crossed the older man's face as he turned to his daughter. "Where are your knucklebones, child?"

As mystified as Draco, Harry opened the small drawstring pouch at her waist, drew out the polished pig's-foot knuckles with which she sometimes gamed, and handed them to her father.

"Do you know how to play?"

Draco nodded, his puzzlement deepening. 'Knucklebones' was a game of speed, skill and manual dexterity. The bones were held loosely in the fist and then tossed in the air. The object was to catch them again on the back of the hand without dropping any.

"Show me."

Draco glanced at Lucius, then back at James Potter. With a shrug he took the bow0shaped pieces of bone and closed his fingers over them. If this was some strange form of initiation ceremony then it was a simple enough test to pass.

Drawing a steady breath, he tossed the knucklebones lightly in the air and shot out his hand to catch. The sequence of movement was almost too swift for the eye to follow. Two knucklebones landed squarely. A third rocked on the edge of his hand but did not fall. Draco tossed them again, this time centring them precisely, and then once more with the same result.

"Go on." James gestured when he hesitated. "I will tell you when to stop."

Time and time again Draco tossed and caught the bones, only dropping them once when Lucius moved on his stool and cast a sudden shadow over the play. At last James declared he had seen enough, and there was approval in his eyes as Draco cupped the bone in his palm and returned them to Harry.

"You have good coordination, lad," he commented, and smiled at Lucius. "Perhaps even better then your brother's."

"Anyone can play knucklebones," Lucius growled. "Lance and sword and mace are different matters entirely."

"Oh, indeed they are, which is why he will have to practise until he weeps tears of blood," James replied. "What I am saying is that he has the potential to become skilled."

Draco flushed with pleasure. His mind's eye was filled with the image of himself dressed as Lucius had been that afternoon, a sword at his hip and a mail coat meshing his body. "It is what I want to do," he said fervently.

Lucius bestowed him a brooding look but made no more adverse remarks. Lily Potter rose abruptly and began clearing away the empty bowls and breadbasket. Glancing at her, Draco saw that her lips were pursed and her eyelids tense. He could sense her irritation, but did not know what was wrong. There was a rueful expression on James's face. Lucius examined his fingernails.

"Some of us are here by necessity," James said. "Go grant you peace of soul, the gift of wise choice and the wherewithal not to squander your life. You will need more than prowess in battle to survive."

"Yes, sir," Draco said on a more subdued note.

James considered him. "Lucius tells me that you read and write Latin."

Draco moved his shoulders. "Enough to get by. I was not the most apt pupil."

"He wasted his time writing secular love poems," Lucius said drily.

James shook his head. "It matters not, it is another string to his bow hen it comes to finding an employer. If he can prove entertaining company n the great hall of a snowbound winter's evening, as well as fight, then he will always have a hearth at which to warm his hands."

"And a snug bed too, I'll warrant!" Lucius laughed, then bit his lip beneath Lily's severe look. "Speaking of which, it is time we made our farewells if I'm to be bright-eyed for the morrow!" He slapped Draco's bony shoulder. "Come, lad, the moon's half waxed already."

Draco rose from his stool and thanked the Potters for their hospitality. The girl smiled at him, her loose plait of black hair outlined by the lantern light, her eyes wide and sparkling. He had wondered whether to mention their encounter by the stream but had decided against it lest it cause trouble for them both. He needed this niche in the world. The mother smiled at him too, but she seemed preoccupied, and although she warmly wished them goodnight, Draco could tell that she was glad to see them leave.

He did not brood on the reason, for too many other thoughts were churning in his mind, James Potter had said that he had the potential to become a great knight, that with his background and then training to some. He was almost assured of a high career. Nervous excitement surged through his body. He thought of the girl's green eyes upon him and embroidered on her look until his imagination was filled with the vision of hundreds of young women tossing flowers at him in admiration as he sat astride a champing Spanish warhorse. Not even the musty smell of Lucius's tent and the scratchy texture of the coarse woollen bed blanket could dampen his enthusiasm. He had set his feet on his chosen road as a penniless beggar, but he knew that his destination would make him wealthy beyond compare.

FHGUFGHUDGHUFDHGUFHGUFHGUFDHGUFHGFDUIGHFUDIHFU:

James Potter lay upon his pallet and gazed up into the darkness. Beside him Lily was silent, but he knew that she was not asleep. Her hair tickled his chest; the warmth of her thigh lay along his own. They had a modicum of privacy; their bed separated from Harry's by a gaily-coloured hanging of woven homespun. On the other side of the screen he could hear his daughter's regular, soft breathing.

James wished that it were a midsummer evening so that he could see the pale glimmer of his wife's hair and the slender shape of her body. The thought stirred his loins to sleepy arousal. He had been twenty years old and she sixteen when they had eloped together and married against her powerful father's will. The lord of Stafford's virgin daughter and a common household knight.

Another sixteen years had passed since that time, and through all the trials and hardships, the pain, the heartache and drudgery, their love had endured. It had to. There was nothing else to armour them against the cold. The story of their elopement had passed into troubadour legend, was sung at every campfire by young men no older than himself when he had burned his bridges.

Thinking of young men brought his mind to Draco Malfoy and he ran a gentle forefinger down his wife's bare arm.

"What did you make of Lucius's brother?" he asked.

"I thought him quiet," she said, "but not because there is nothing happening within. When he finds his feet, then we shall see."

"I like the lad."

"He seems pleasant enough," she agreed, "but he did not reveal enough of himself for me to make a judgement. Has Lucius discovered why he ran away from the monastery?"

"All he said was that the boy had good reason. He would not give me the details." His hand drifted form her am to the swell of her breast and gently stroked. "Of course, he has only heard one side of the tale, and there are always two, and often more." He was silent for a while, pondering, enjoying the silken feel of his wife's skin. She did not add to the conversation, which was unusual for her. Talking in the closeness of their bed at night, wrapped in each other's arms with the word at bay, was one of her favourite moments. She always had things to tell him, subjects to broach, and matters to discuss. When she did not speak, he mooted another concern of his won.

"It might be for the best if Harry were to wear a wimple when she does about the camp form now on," he suggested. "She had not ceased to be a child in my eyes, but in the eyes of other men, it is obviously different." The memory of Pettigrew's predatory gaze tightened his lips.

Lily captured his stoking hand in hers and held it still. "She has been a woman for almost a year now. You are right, it is time that she concealed her hair." A tremor entered her voice. "I was not much older than her when I first saw you across my father's bailey."

Her words sent a pang through James's vitals. "Your hair was loose then too," he murmured. "I had never seen anything so beautiful." There was pain mingled with the remembered spark of the moment. Had they resisted temptation, he would still be doing guard duty at Stafford's hearth, and she would be some rich baron's wife. "Do you have any regrets?" he asked.

"Of course I do," she said immediately, her breath soft against his bicep. He tightened it, preparing himself to hear what he would rather shut out. Her teeth nipped his skin. "Fool," she said with amused contempt, "I would follow you to the ends of the earth and over the edge of the world, you know that – or you should by now."

He was slightly mollified, but remained wary. "Then what do you regret?"

Lily sighed and curled in close to his body. "Sometimes I yearn for the protection of the bar of my former gilded cage and the days when even my thinking was done for me. Flying high and free had its price. I fear for our daughter. She is so young and fresh, and there is no man on the tourney circuit I would entrust her honour or happiness."

Not for the first time James was visited by guilt and a sense of inadequacy, He was an ordinary knight, competent, a better teacher of the skills than he was a fighter, His one act of folly in an otherwise responsible life had been to steal the exotic bird form its cage, and he had been paying for the sin ever since, There had never been a time when they had gone hungry, he had always managed to provide, and Lily's skill with a needle enabled them to dwell in relative comfort for his trade, but he could not give he the security of the massive stone walls from whose shadow he had snatched her away,

"Come the autumn, I will try to find a permanent position in a lord's retinue," he replied. "There is bound to be someone in need of hearth knights with Richard in prison and Philip of France free to wreak his worst."

"You will have to do more than try this year," she said quietly.

Her tone sent a ripple of apprehension down his spine. "Lily?"

She guided his hand down over her body, to the gentle curve of her belly. "I am with child again; for three months I have not bled."

He felt he soft flesh beneath his palm, but could not discern if it was any more abundant than usual. The early nights of winter, the dark mornings, meant that he had seldom seen Lily naked over the past few months. All conversation, all lovemaking had been conducted in the dark. "But that's imposs-" he started to say, then closed his mouth, remembering the time he had left it to the last moment to withdraw, the seed spurting from his body as he jerked out of the passage to her womb.

"Are you sure?" It was a stupid question. Of course she was sure. The worry, the keeping it to herself was the reason for her sharp tongue. "Ah, God, Lily." He freed his hand form hers and slipped it around her body, offering comfort, seeking it himself while he made a swift calculation. It was late April now, almost the feast of St Mark. By Martinmas, in November, he would be responsible for another mouth to feed. Fear assaulted him in a sweeping, physical wave. Lily had almost died bearing Harry, her hips too narrow to comfortably accommodate the baby's head. Old Mildred sold potions to the camp whores whose fluxes came late, but their efficacy was as dubious as their contents, and he knew that Lily would utterly refuse to dose herself. He could not bear the thought of losing her – she was all that he had – and cold sweat broke out on his brow.

"I will seek early for winter quarters," he agreed huskily.

Lily nodded against his chest. "I wish I had told you sooner, but I did not want to burden you until I was sure." Her voice was small and muffled against the bulk of his body.

"You should have done." He squeezed her against him, kissed her in reassurance, and thanked God for the darkness that concealed his expression, even as earlier he had been longing for the light.

FNJGFDHUGFHGUIDNGFUGHFUDIHGFJNVDHGUFDYGURHUFNDJGHFUGIFYEUTYURF

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Mmmmm, yeh.  
This was beta'ed by Céline as usual.  
Next one up soon, okay?

Love Rye xxxxxxxxx  
+REVIEW! I know that people are reading this #looks at stats page# so review :) oui? bien.


	4. chapitre quatre

Disclaimer: Not mine. Belongs to JKR, you fools.

errrm, **unbeta'ed** this time. I apologise now for any horrendous mistakes / if it randomly changes language and tense or something equally foolish :/

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**Chapitre quatre.**

The tournament was to be held over an agreed area of three large fields, its boundaries set by the stream that supplied the camp on the northern and western edges, by a small wood to the south and by an abandoned hermitage to the east. No fighting was to take place beyond these markers. Anyone invading the nearby village to fight would be disqualified immediately.

An enclosure of withy screens had been erected close to the centre of the first field where the fighters could claim sanctuary if they were in difficulty or needed to take a respite. It was here that Lucius brought Draco as the morning sun climbed in the sky and the knights on the two sides began to warm up with practice charges and turns. Weapons glittered; banter was exchanged, both the pleasant and the aggressive.

"You should be able to see the combat from here," Lucius said as Draco entered the enclosure. "Remember to be ready with my spare lance and shield if I signal to you."

Draco nodded, squinting up at Lucius astride the dun stallion. The older man held Soleil on a tight rein, the tawny head tucked into the deep chest. A solid jousting elm hung from a throng on the saddle and the blue and gold shield was slung out of the way across Lucius's broad back. The spare shield weighed down Draco's left arm, and his right hand curved around the haft of a blunted spear. A water bottle was slung across his shoulders and in his pouch there were two honey cakes. Other attendants, similarly equipped, were arriving at the enclosure.

"How will you know friend from foe?"

"Easy," Lucius replied. "Each man shouts the name of his patron lord. And if he does not own one then he is fighting for himself. I am Geoffrey Duredent's man today. His opponent is Saer de Quinci. So, any man who cries "De Quinci!" on the field is fodder for the taking!" He reined the horse about. "Keep sharp - and don't move from this enclosure. If you do, you become prey and I don't want to afford a ransom for you!"

Draco gave a rueful shrug. "Small chance of that," he said. "I can scarcely lift this shield, let alone use it. Take care of yourself."

Lucius shrugged. "My watchdog will do that." He jerked his head in the direction of the scarlet and black clad figure of James Potter, who was encouraging a rangy bay stallion to perform circles and back-kicks. With a final salute to Draco, Lucius set off across the field.

Draco unslung the shield form his aching left arm, deposited it on the ground, and leaning his spear against the withy barrier, looked over the top at the tourney field. Te knights were beginning to collect in two ragged lines. Men riding out to join their prospective team occasionally clashed lances with an opponent, testing strength and bravado. Horses whinnied, clods of soil were flung from pounding hooves, and the smell of excitement filled the air. Draco's throat grew dry and his heart began ti hammer as if he too were physically involved in the proceedings.

"De Quinci!" yelled the youth next to him in the enclosure, and thumped the withy fencing, "Quinci, Quinci!"

Draco considered responding with his own cry of "Duredent" but seeing the size of the youth, the bulging muscles beneath the leather jerkin he kept his voice in his throat. Tonight, when the day's activities were over, he would compose a song to encapsulate all that he was feeling.

Above the shouts, the thud of hooves and rattle of weapons, a hunting horn blared a single, sustained note. There was a moment when the sound absorbed all other noise and movement, suspending them in its resonance, and then the two lines tore free and charged towards one another in a roar of motion.

The ground shook to the thunder of hooves and the air glittered with the colours of linen and silk, the bright flash of spears like fish writhing in a net. The shock of individual impacts felt all as one to Draco. With fists clenched on the withy barrier, he watched the blend and swirl of men, horses and weapons, and tried to follow the progress of Lucius's blue and gold, and the scarlet and black of Potter. The thump and thud of weapons meeting shields lodged in his gut and tendrils of excitement unfurled through his veins.

A riderless horse thundered past the enclosure, a mounted knight in hot pursuit, his own mount straining under the burden.

"De Quinci!" screamed Draco's neighbour, beside himself with excitement as the knight closed on the loose horse, a fine animal, richly caparisoned and well worth capturing.

Another competitor galloped up fast from the opposite side, his surcoat parti-coloured red and yellow to match the quartering on his shield. His right arm was raised, churning a flail in the air, and he brought the weapon round and down on the other man's helm with devastating effect. The knight had no time to defend himself. Although his helm saved him from serious hurt, the force of the blow and the clang of the flail against the iron stunned him and he was easy prey for his attacker to unseat. He struck the ground with bone-jarring force, and suddenly there were two loose horses.

The knight in the red and yellow caught the bridle of the nearest destrier and rode away to deposit his prize. At Draco's side the youth had ceased to shout, his eyes dark with shock. The unhorsed man slowly rolled over and started to crawl towards the enclosure. Biting his lip, the youth sped out to help him. Draco's hesitation was brief. He did not have the ability to passively observe, half the reason his monastic career had foundered. Ignoring Lucius's strictures concerning remaining in safety, he grasped the spare spear for protection and darted out to do what he could.

Together he and the youth took the knight's arms and dragged him towards the enclosure. They were paid scant attention, for the fighting was concentrated down at the far end of the field, and they had almost reached safety when the competitor in the red and yellow returned to claim the ransom price from his victim.

"Duredent!" he bellowed, the sound a muffled boom emerging through the vent holes in his jousting helm. He swung the flail around his head, threatening the boys, his stallion plunging close.

Without pause for thought, Draco grasped the spear in both hands and thrust it at the whirling flail. The shaft caught in the chain, and with a violent jerk, the momentum was suspended. The spear tore out of Draco's grip almost dislocating his arms, but that same force and the sudden clumsiness of the trapped spear unbalanced the man in the saddle. His horse reared, and he was thrown, thudding down heavily at the horrified Draco's feet.

Appalled, feeling sick, Draco retrieved Lucius's spear, the flail still wound around the head socket, and retreated behind the barrier where the knight he had run out to rescue was now removing his helm.

The warrior in the parti-coloured surcoat sat up and stared around, his breathing stertorous through the slits in his helm. Then he lumbered to his feet, and drawing his sword, advanced upon the withy enclosure. Draco backed, his spear braced. The knight ducked beneath it, closed his fist around the trapped flail and yanked it free. Then he seized a fistful of Draco's tunic, lifted him bodily off his feet and slammed him down on his back.

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Yeh, i know,_ cliffhanger_ : BUHAHAHAHA.

This is actually only half of chapter four. My laptop is being a fool and so I have to get it repaired and everything before i can access anything. Which isnt good. At. All.

Anyway, review s.v.p?

Merci beaucoup,

love

Rye xxxxxxx


	5. Chapter 4 part II

_**Disclaimer: The HP characters do not belong to me in any way, shape or form, I am merely toying with their mere existence. BUHAHAHAHA.**_

**_A.N. Unless otherwise stated, any characters whom are not recognisable as part of the Harry Potter franchise, are real historical characters, and, therefore, do not belong to me. Okay?_**

_**Plus, sorry this took so long. I had it ready AAAAGES ago, but ff dot net is being a fool and not letting me upload documents. GROWL.**_

_**In last time's exciting episode:**_

_The warrior in the parti-coloured surcoat sat up and stared around, his breathing stertorous through the slits in his helm. Then he lumbered to his feet, and drawing his sword, advanced upon the withy enclosure. Draco backed, his spear braced. The knight ducked beneath it, closed his fist around the trapped flail and yanked it free. Then he seized a fistful of Draco's tunic, lifted him bodily off his feet and slammed him down on his back._

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**Chapter Four part Two**

"You want to fight, boy?" he snarled. "I'll teach you a lesson you'll not forget."

"This is sanctuary!" Draco yelled through the pain. "You can't touch me in here!"

"That's right, Pettigrew, you can't!" declared one of the spectators, a stocky man wearing a stained apron, one eye hidden behind a large leather patch. "You know the rule."

The knight stared round the compound at the gathered uneasy crowd of onlookers. He returned his sword to its sheath and nodded. "Very well," he said. Stooping, he grabbed Draco by the scruff and hauled him back out onto the field. "Now he's not in sanctuary; I can do as I chose with him."

Draco struggled against the bunched fist holding him captive. He was aware of the stunned faces watching from the enclosure, but no one was prepared to go beyond words to help him. Once more he was flung to the ground, and the huge knight stood over him.

"I doubt you're even worth the bother, vermin, but I'm going to lesson you anyway." Peter Pettigrew drew the flail through his hand in a gesture that was almost sensual.

Across the battlefield, Lucius disengaged from his opponent to gain his breath, and glanced around. The eye slits in his tourney helm did not yield a good view of the field, but at least it was not dusty, as it would be later on in the season when visibility was frequently nil. To his right, James has just defeated one knight and beaten off another in a rare display of pure aggression. Usually James's performance was laconic, but today there seemed to be a burr beneath his buttocks.

There would be a ransom to share now, a good omen since the tourney was less than an hour old and there was still plenty of opportunity to reap the field. Lucius signalled to his companion indicating that they should retire to the enclosure and take a brief respite before the next assault. His throat was parched and he needed a drink.

The two men started back up the field at a modest canter, their sense alert for a sudden attack. Then James swore, shook Lucius's sleeve and pointed towards the sanctuary. What Lucius saw made his blood run cold. He slapped the reins down on Soleil's neck, drove in his spurs and thundered up the field like a fury.

Draco rolled away from the thud of the flail against his ribs, a scream ripping from his throat, his knees doubling up. He heard the jink of the chain, the whistle of the iron end winging through the air, and he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, tears wringing on his lashes. The blow never descended. In its place he heard the snarl of his brother's voice.

"Strike again, Pettigrew, and it will be your last act on God's earth!"

"Why should it concern you, Malfoy? Keep your face out of this!"

"He is my brother, my youngest brother, and I will know why you are beating him!"

"He attacked me first, with a spear. Was I supposed to smile and pat his head? God's eyes, I won't tolerate whelps like him darting in and out of the sanctuary, making a mockery of true knights!"

"I wasn't," Draco croaked from the ground. "I was trying to help a fallen man." He stared up at the mask of Lucius's helm. Below it, the broad shoulders rose and fell rapidly. "He was going to strike him with that flail, so I stepped in." He sat up, his arms folded around his ribs which felt as though they were on fire. It was impossible to draw breath except in short stabs.

"Let him go, Pettigrew," said James, manoeuvring his bay between Lucius and the standing man. "Draco does not know the rules; he's a green boy. It won't happen again. Is your pride worth so much to you?"

"He denied me a man's ransom!" Pettigrew jabbed a forefinger at Lucius. "I'll have payment out of your own purse!"

"You'll have no such thing!" Lucius's voice was raw with fury.

Draco hung his head, feeling sick, knowing that this was all his fault. And yet he could not have just stood by and watched.

The knight whom he had rescued limped out of the enclosure, clutching his side. He had removed his helm and there were streaks of rust on his brow and cheeks where sweat and iron had met. He was in his early twenties, with light-brown hair, and a sparse ginger beard hugging the point of his chin. "Call it even," he panted. "The lad unhorsed you, Pettigrew, and if he had known the rules, he'd have put that spear to your throat and demanded a ransom of you."

Lucius's helm swivelled in Draco's direction. "You unhorsed him?" He pointed at Pettigrew.

Draco nodded. "I put the haft of your spear through the flail's chain and pulled him off his destrier."

Lucius turned to Pettigrew. "I would forget the incident if I were you," he said. "Any claim you press can be met with a counter claim."

"You would not dare!"

"Can you afford to try me?"

There was a taut silence. Pettigrew's mail mitten tightened around the handle of the flail. Lucius's dun stallion sidled.

From the far side of the field, but galloping up fast, came a group of three riders, their lances couched, signalling a challenge.

The tension broke. Peter Pettigrew ran to catch his mount's bridle and swung into the saddle. "Bold words, Malfoy," he sneered. "Yes, I can afford to try you to the end of your luck, but I doubt that you van pay my price!" Yanking the horse around, he rode away across the field.

Lucius cursed and turned Soleil. "Get back inside that sanctuary!" he snarled at Draco. "And even if you see me dragged off my horse and killed, do not so much as lift your buttocks off the turf, understand?"

"Yes, I didn't intend to…"

"Go, curse you, I haven't the time to listen to your paltry excuses!" Without waiting to see if Draco obeyed, Lucius couched his lance and spurred forward to meet the rapidly approaching challenge. James circled round and spurred with him, one man going hard left, the other to the right.

Draco remained where he was long enough to see Lucius batter aside his opponent's shield, knock him off his horse and turn to deal with the man in the centre, then retreated to the enclosure.

"That was a brave act, lad," said the competitor whom he had saved. "I am grateful to you, even if no one else is." He extended his arm. "My name is John Marshal. If ever I can be of service to you, do not hesitate to seek me out."

Draco shook the proffered hand. He was tongue-tied by embarrassment and still too shaken to give a coherent reply.

John Marshal smiled. "And you are called?"

"Malfoy, sir. Draconis Malfoy."

"I won't forget you, I promise" the knight withdrew his hand, nodded pleasantly and with his squire in tow, walked off across the enclosure.

Draco stared after him and clutched his aching ribs.

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That evening, Draco and Lucius dined a second time at the Potter's fire, and there was much to talk about. Lucius and James had had an excellent day upon the field and taken several ransoms. Their enthusiasm was full-blown and every move and tactic, strike and counterstroke had to be discussed in detail. Also talked to death was Draco's encounter with the scourge of the tourney field Peter Pettigrew.

"I still cannot believe that you unhorsed him!" Lucius declared, his earlier fury at Draco's insubordination mellowed by the day's triumphs and the excellent wine he was drinking. "Jesu, he'll never live it down. Pulled off his horse by a green youth straight out if the monastery - David and Goliath!"

"He'll never live the grudge down either," warned James, who had drunk more than Lucius, enough to become a trifle morose. "He's a known killer."

"God's life, the lad isn't likely to tangle with him again!"

"No, but we are."

"Oh, close your mouth on your cup!" Lucius grinned indulgently and tilted the wine flagon towards his friend. "Last one. We'll need to be sober for the morrow." He glanced sidelong. "How are your ribs now, Draco?"

"Sore," said Draco ruefully, and rubbed his hand over the tight linen bandaging which ha had been wrapped for support. The pain had been mitigated by John Marshal's presentation to his earlier that evening of a very fine gilded sword belt in token of his gratitude. "For when you win your spurs," the knight had said with a smile.

John Marshal, Lucius had discovered by asking around, was the nephew of the great William Marshal, lord of vast estates scattered throughout England, Wales, Ireland and Normandy, and a baron in high favour with the ruling Angevin dynasty. In his youth he had been the greatest jouster ever to level a lance on the tourney field. In his mid forties now, he was still a formidable warrior. That Draco had brought himself to the attention of a member of the Marshal clan was another reason why Lucius had gone lightly on his younger brother.

"You can stay in camp tomorrow," he told Draco. "There's harness and armour to be cleaned. For all your prowess on the field, I shall feel safer knowing you're nowhere near the conflict."

Draco gave a careful shrug. His ribs hurt too much for him to protest, and after today's adventure, he was not averse to spending a day by the fire.

Harry stooped to remove the empty flagon from between the men. The scent of wood smoke and lavender drifted across Draco's nostrils. Lucius's eyes narrowed on the girl and then filled with indignation. "You've put her in a wimple!" he said accusingly to James. "And she has such lovely hair!"

"It was time, and past time." Lily emerged from the tent where she had been fetching some sewing. "You are not the only man to notice her hair, Lucius. She is a young woman now, and not a child any more, and this is a decent household."

Lucius was startled by the prim note in Lily's voice. "Of course it is." He recovered swiftly. "I was just taken by surprise… and regret if the truth were known." He smiled at Harry. "I remember her when she was a tiny child, no higher than my kneecap. Time passes too quickly."

"Indeed it does," James agreed with a maudlin nod.

Harry tugged at the edge of her wimple. "It makes my head itch and it's hot," she complained. "I hate it."

"You'll soon grow accustomed," said Lily. "After a few weeks you will feel strange without a head covering."

"Other girls don't have to wear one."

"That has no bearing on what is fit for you." Her mother's tone was sharp with warning.

"Yes, it does, I…"

"Harry, enough," James interrupted. "You are embarrassing our guests and shaming yourself. You wear a wimple because we have judged that it is time you did so. I will hear no more on the matter."

The girl's chin quivered. She compressed her lips and took the empty jug into the tent, leaving an awkward silence in her wake.

With a rueful smile, Lucius rose to his feet, pulling Draco with him. "Your own fault," he commented to lighten the moment. "Now you have two women on your hands when this morning you only had one."

James snorted with reluctant humour. "She will come round in a while," he said. "Always stalks off in a temper, and then returns full of remorse."

As Lucius and Draco took their leave, James followed them to the perimeter of his fire. "Two women on my hands, and one of them with child," he announced. "Before Martinmas I am to be a father again."

Lucius's eyes widened. "Small wonder that you fought like a demon on the tourney field today!" he exclaimed. "My heartiest congratulations to both of you." He belted James between the shoulder blades. "I will pray that the babe resembles its mother!"

James forced a smile. "As long as both are strong and healthy I care not." He gazed back at his wife with troubled eye, and added, as if reassuring himself, "She has Harry to help her, and we are going to seek winter quarter's early. It is not as if she has bee worn out bearing a child every year, We have tried to be careful."

Lucius's expression sobered in the face of James's obvious anxiety. He had no comfort to offer; he new nothing of childbirth except that it was messy and fraught with danger. Those thoughts would be uppermost in James's mind too. "If you need anything, you know where to seek," he said, and thumped him again, but more gently by way of support.

Lucius and Draco were halfway across the camp when they encountered a man crawling through the grass in a drunken stupor. He wore the tattered habit of a Benedictine monk and the bald ring of his tonsure was fuzzy with stubble.

Lucius gave a snort of amused disgust and stooped to haul the sodden cleric to his feet, "Lost your way again, Brother Fletcher? Draco, help me hold him up."

Grimacing with revulsion, Draco grasped the man's sleeve. Even to be near a monk made him shudder. The stench of wine and ginevra warred with the pungency of the man's unwashed body. Red-rimmed eyes surveyed him owlishly, then lost their focus. "Carpe diem, quam minimum credula poster," he slurred, then belched. Draco averted his head and fought the urge to gag.

"Do you know what he said?" Lucius enquired. "He always speaks Latin when he's in his cups."

"Enjoy the day, trust little in tomorrow," Draco replied in a constricted voice, as he fought not to inhale the priest's foul breath. The man was like one of the cadavers of his nightmares.

"That sounds like Brother Fletcher's philosophy. Come on, his tent's just over here."

They half dragged, half carried Brother Fletcher beyond another ring of firelight occupied by a group of ragged-clad women and children, and brought him to a dilapidated canvas awning, one of its poles surmounted by a crude wooden cross.

Brother Fletcher collapsed from their arms on to his pallet. His eyes rolled in their direction. "Dominus vobiscum," he said, making the sign of the cross with a wavering hand before unconsciousness claimed him.

"Go with God," Draco translated.

"I know that one. Come, he'll be all right. It isn't the first time I've seen him to his bed."

Draco gazed at the fire nearby. One of the women thrust out her bosom and pursed her lips at him in blatant invitation. Another, a straggle-haired blonde, rose from her place and approached the brothers.

"Lucius," she purred, rubbed against the discomfited older man like a cat. "I hear you took some fine ransoms today." She wrapped her arm around his.

Lucius shook her off. "Let it be, Narcissa, I'm not here on business."

She pouted at him. Her eyes slid to Draco.

"Neither is he. Go and find Weasley if you're short of a customer."

"Oh, Lucius!" she said in an impatient voice. "You know I prefer you!"

"You do at the moment because I've got silver in my pouch." Lowering his head, Lucius took Draco by the arm and set off at a determined pace. Hands on hips, Narcissa tossed her head and swayed back to the fire.

"I've seen her before," Draco said with a frown.

Lucius cleared his throat. "She was in my tent when I brought you there out of your senses."

Draco looked at his brother in interest. "Do you know her well?"

"Hah, only too well! She's a camp whore, good at her trade, but as fickle as a west wind and given to emptying a man's purse in short order. Don't you go getting any ideas," he warned sharply.

"I wasn't; I was just curious."

"Well, keep your curiosity above your belt."

Draco thought of several retorts, but was sufficiently prudent not to utter them. Lucius had a powerful right arm. Instead, he asked about the priest they had just helped to his bed.

"Brother Fletcher?" Lucius pinched the end of his nose. "He's English, a former chaplain to some noble family in the Seine valley. He was thrown out for embezzlement and drunken debauchery, among other things. He acts as our confessor and comforter - when he's sober, which is not very often. Earns his money by baptising and shriving." They arrived at their own tent and Lucius unlaced the opening. "He is not a proper priest, but no ordained cleric will touch those who live off the tourneys unless they are very high nobility with the necessary bribe-silver. Any man who dies jousting is considered to have committed suicide and is therefore beyond the church's grace."

"I know. More than once at Hogwarts the prior condemned such gatherings as this"

"And I suppose that only made you all the more determined to sample the life for yourself," Lucius said dryly.

Draco shrugged as he followed his brother into the musty darkness. "Nothing could ever be more damning than the life I lived at Hogwarts," he replied bleakly, and knew that tonight his dreams would haunt him.

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**Mmmm, so this was unbeta'ed. If you see any mistakes, be they spelling, grammar or language, tell me via review. I'm a perfectionist.**

**And, I altered the earlier chapters a little, so go back and reread them or things might not make sense to you as the plot thickens. kthnx.**

**Rye x**

**_+thankyou Charl for reviewing :) In response to your questions, it only takes me about an hour to write and proof read a chapter. English is quite a simple language really, which is why I get really angry and flame people who speak English as their first language and STILL can't spell correctly. Erm, ...yes, you're right. I AM A PERFECTIONIST. Thanks for pinting out those errors... Ima change them, I promise :D Mmmm, something is "blatantly going to happen to Lily" is it:D I'm not going to tell you whether you're right or not, you're gonna have to wait and see :) hehe. And, hmmm, you might not be too far off the mark avec Pettigrew. We know he's a bastard, so anything's possible with him. :O !! You really think I'm going to ruin Harry's virtue? Why, my dear, you know me far too well. :) hahaha "Draco's getting totally beaten to death by a rabid knight and you give us a CLIFFHANGER" that made me laugh like WOAH. Sorry about that, I hate cliffies too, but, you know, I had to do it, hahaha. About Duredent and deQuinci? LOOK AT THE TOP OF THIS CHAPTER. :)_**


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